This week, in his budget speech, the UK Chancellor will refer to the usual need to reduce expenditure on social welfare and the deficit on public finances. One thing he won't talk about is the amounts spent on corporate welfare and how that is contributing to austerity, income and wealth inequalities, and deteriorating public finances.

The Chancellor's plan to build Britain's first garden city in 100 years in Ebbsfleet has been welcomed by some with open arms. The promise of more homes in the south east is a good thing, but 15,000 new homes barely scratch the surface of the real number of properties needed across the country.

Not only should we question what the Conservative vision of a hard-working society looks like in reality, we should also remember who is evangelising it and why. When it comes to work and family backgrounds the Coalition cabinet could not be more unrepresentative of the run-of-the-mill British family.

If not specifics, then, what will the Chancellor be hoping to achieve with the Budget? He will want to try and convince voters that the economic recovery is bringing some benefits for them, their families and their households...

Next week George Osborne will announce his budget plans, and with the recovery gaining momentum I'm expecting great things. However, if we want to reap the benefits, provisions need to be made for the SMEs who pulled this country through the recession, starting with a targeted cut to the duty on diesel fuel.

General revolt against Ofsted is growing, with schools around the country (and their communities) saying that its processes are not fair or reasonable, its criteria arbitrary, and its inspections incredibly stressful and destructive.

Child poverty costs this country £29billion a year, and will rise to £35billion by 2020 if the projections prove accurate. Other countries are doing far better on the existing - internationally recognised - measures. It's not the child poverty targets that are 'discredited', but the government's approach to meeting them.

German chancellor Angela Merkel is being treated like political royalty, a consequence of her country's economic power as well as prime minister David Cameron's desperate need for friends in Europe. Few would argue about the position of Germany as the economic powerhouse of the European Union but what can Britain learn from the German economic model?

When religious leaders across the spectrum line up to say your policies have created a "national crisis" of hunger and poverty, when your government is forced to push out a long-delayed report that comprehensively debunks your already obviously weak explanation for the explosive growth of food banks, it really isn't a great idea to claim that your policies were driven by a "moral mission".

It would be fair to say that Alex Salmond, the SNP, and the YES campaign for Scottish independence have had better weeks than the one just past since launching the White Paper setting out their vision for an independent Scotland in November 2013.

Over the last five or six years, as poverty and hardship have deepened, unemployment soared and inequality increased across Europe, so has xenophobia festered - with the rise of far-right parties such as Golden Dawn in Greece, and uncomfortable parallels can be drawn between the current socio-economic climate and that of the 1930s, which paved the way for Hitler's rise to power.

The UK Chancellor, George Osborne, said in the Conservative Party Conference in 2011 that we would deal with climate change and reduce emissions, but not faster or slower than other EU countries, saying that we will not save the world by putting our country out of business...

Mr Osborne's refusal to hammer out a currency union with the SNP is not an argument against independence, but rather a reason to vote in favour of it. That's because without a union, Scots will be free to establish their own monetary policy and maintain full control over their economy.